MANCHESTER, NH – The state on Thursday rested its case against Stephen Murphy, a former Youth Development Center youth counselor charged with eight counts of raping a teen 27-28 years ago at the state’s juvenile detention center.
Earlier in the day, David Meehan, who was a 14-year-old virgin in 1997 when he testified Murphy raped him, admitted under cross-examination that he confused what occurred in each of the sexual assaults he endured at the hands of Murphy. He said he lives with the memories every day.
It was the third day of trial for Murphy, 56, of Danvers, Mass., charged with repeatedly raping the teen in 1997 and 1998.
Murphy, 56, of Danvers, Mass., denies all the allegations.
Defense Attorney Charles J. Keefe, in cross-examining Meehan, focused on statements he gave in interrogatories (defense questions) in his civil suit against the State of New Hampshire, statements to police and his testimony at the civil trial and a recent criminal trial.
Keefe did not divulge that the criminal trial was of James Woodlock, Murphy’s co-defendant, who was found guilty of being his accomplice in raping Meehan.
Keefe also questioned Meehan about his mental state prior to the civil trial and what he had told the state’s psychiatrist.
Meehan at one point was on the internet 20 hours a day. He wanted to figure out why it happened to him and whether he was manipulated. He was conducting his own investigation and looking into religious, social, economic and political aspects of it. He also was researching whether he was related to anyone in the Bible. “Yes, I got really into it,” he said.
He told the state’s psychiatric expert that the situation was very much David vs. Goliath.
Meehan wanted to know why it happened and researched the history of YDC, and the “higher ups” to see “how high” the conspiracy went, whether it went to the Governor’s office. Asked if he looked into whether it reached the White House, Meehan said he didn’t know. He needed to know if a lot more people knew what was going on at the YDC, he explained.
He agreed with the defense attorney that he was researching Trump, Biden and Hilary Clinton and believed in political conspiracies like PizzaGate. He tried to find out if his blood was tied to something out of this world.
He also looked into MKUltra, a CIA illegal operation that identified drugs to use during interrogations to brainwash and force confessions.
Meehan looked into other conspiracy theories as well but explained at the time he was paranoid. He also was suffering from hallucinations and smelling odors that weren’t there. He agreed with Keefe that that was a side effect of long-term use of Adderall, which he has taken since he was a child.
He is under medical treatment for ADHD and said he smokes marijuana daily.
Meehan said he believes a lot of people at YDC – youth counselors, nurses, administrators – were involved in a cover-up of the abuse of teens detained there. He said he doesn’t trust anyone, including police and prosecutors.
When it came to the alleged assaults, Meehan said he first reported them in 2017 to Brentwood Police, who referred him to New Hampshire State Police, who referred him to Manchester Police since YDC was located in the city. The case was then referred back to the State Police and then the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office which headed the investigation that led to the arrest of 10 former state employees.
Meehan was interviewed by each of those departments and the attorney general’s office on numerous occasions, and he has testified at two prior trials. Keefe used transcripts of some of the interviews and Meehan’s testimony to point out inconsistencies.
One time Meehan said he called Erin, his girlfriend at the time, to break up with her so he could get a furlough home on Thanksgiving, per YDC staff. He said the first assault took place after that phone call around Halloween 1997. The indictment, Keefe pointed out, listed Nov. 1, 1997 as a date of one of the assaults. Woodlock, Keefe said, didn’t work on Halloween or Nov. 1, 1997.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Charles Bucca, in his opening statement, told the jurors that the state is not required to prove the date of the offense.
In another alleged assault, Meehan testified Murphy assaulted him as he was on his back on his bed, as Woodlock held his legs down. But in other police reports, he said Woodlock held the door and Murphy assaulted him while he was on his stomach on the metal bed frame.
Another time he said he punched Murphy in the face during an assault, while in testimony on Wednesday he said he punched him in the testicles.
It was only in October, he agreed, that he told investigators Murphy assaulted him in the “family room,” an open section of the L-shaped hallway of the second-floor of East Cottage, where he was assigned a room. He said prosecutors knew but Keefe said there was not record of that allegation until last month.
“How were they supposed to know – through telepathy?” Keefe asked over prosecutor Audriana Mecula’s objection.
Meehan said he realized that was where some of the assaults happened after Woodlock testified about the family room. Woodlock was convicted of two counts of being an accomplice to rape after a trial in September.
Meehan told Keefe that he confused when the different assaults took place and what happened in each.
Keefe questioned him about another incident, but Meehan answered that he didn’t know how much he could say about it because it involved a different defendant at King Cottage. Keefe said that was fair.
Keefe also questioned Meehan about a violent incident that took place in May 1998 in which Meehan alleges Murphy beat him. In that incident, however, Meehan said Murphy didn’t sexually assault him.
Meehan previously testified that Murphy forced him to perform fellatio on him during their “one-on-one” counseling sessions in East Cottage.
Under direct examination by Mekula Thursday morning, Meehan said he aged out of the state’s custody at 18. He received his discharge papers in the mail.
Mekula showed him those documents which listed various events he testified about: his commitment on Dec. 2, 1995 when he was 13 years old after stealing a firearm and hiding in the wall of his bedroom; Jan. 3, 1998, when he was returned to YDC after going AWOL on his Thanksgiving furlough home; Sept. 12, 1998, when he wss hospitalized at the Elliot Hospital after he said he was allegedly raped by Murphy and had his head slammed against the wall, losing consciousness; Sept. 6, 1999, his discharge.
When he was released from state custody, his girlfriend Erin (later to become his wife) was pregnant. They got an apartment and had a child. Both worked, he said.
“We were just trying to survive,” he said.
By the time he was 28, they had two kids. “I was falling apart,” he said. Meehan testified he was heavily into drugs. “Still just trying to survive. I was a mess,” he said.
Previously, he testified that he had convictions for a couple of DUIs and drug offenses.
Now, age 44, he said he has three great kids and a “beautiful, loving and supportive wife.”
What Murphy allegedly did to him, he said, is still with him. “None of it is any better,” he said.
Mekula asked him why he was testifying in the criminal case. “I have to pay for everything I ever did. What makes this situation any different?” he said.
Manchester Ink Link normally doesn’t identify an alleged victim of sexual abuse but Meehan went public with his allegations when he filed the civil suit against the state of New Hampshire three years after he went to police.
It is the third time Meehan has testified about what happened to him as a child at the YDC. Meehan made his allegations public in 2017 because his son was in trouble and, he previously testified, he feared his son would end up in YDC, later renamed the John H. Sununu Youth Services Center, and be raped.
In April 2024, he testified in the civil case in Rockingham County Superior Court and in September 2025, he testified against Woodlock, who was convicted of two counts of being an accomplice to his rape. Woodlock was accused of standing guard while Murphy raped him.
In January, Murphy was tried in Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District jury on charges of raping another 14-year-old boy on a stairwell in East Cottage. The judge declared a mistrial in that case when the jury deadlocked.
When Meehan contacted law enforcement in 2017, the state launched an investigation into the YDC. Ultimately, 10 men were charged with abusing children detained there.
Meehan, three years later, filed a civil suit against the state. It was the first of more than 1,500 cases brought by people sent to the YDC who alleged they were physically and/or sexually abused there.
The jury in the civil trial awarded Meehan $38 million. Within minutes of the verdict being announced, the state contended the jury’s verdict was legally limited to $475,000. That’s because the jury form was marked to indicate the state was liable for one incident that caused Meehan’s years of suffering and mental illness. Under state law, an incident is capped at $475,000. The judge sided with the state.
Jurors who contacted defense attorneys later said they meant he suffered from one case of PTSD resulting from hundreds of incidents of assaults.
Defense attorneys are appealing the judge’s ruling.